December 2017 – General Chat

I’m hoping to finish everything related to the mapping challenges for next year, plus I also hope to start a new updating event, similar to 100 Summer Days of Nostalgia but smaller in scope and commitment.

I’d also like to start a discussion about the possibility of creating a story-based RTSL EP2 SP mod.

I had intended to replay a few from the hall of fame, but 3 now I’ve downloaded won’t open in steam, says files are missing, whether that’s me or the mods I don’t know…. and where I’d get said missing files I’ve no idea. I wonder if re downloading steam would make any difference, or make it worse, thing is, some mods do play and others do not…very strange..

I finished Deep Space Nine last month and really enjoyed it. Anyone who has seen it, I’m sure, can remember the Dominion War and the epic 12-part finale. Almost everything about this series clicked for me. I enjoyed all the characters, the complex political intrigue, and the fascinating one-off episodes like Far Beyond the Stars too.

I can’t say the same for Voyager at this point. I knew going in that Voyager was divisive at best, and thus far I think that reputation is deserved. I will reserve judgement until the end, but some things really stand out. “Threshold” is an infamous episode, for good reason, but I found a lot more to dislike about “Tattoo.” That was just offensive, as is pretty much everything about the walking Native American stereotype Chakotay.

I also finished Skyrim, at least the main story, which I thoroughly liked. This game took a while to grow on me, but once it did, it was a great experience. I put off the main story for a good 30-40 hours, just exploring and side questing. I liked how the game never pressured me to do anything beyond what I wanted to do. It is happy to take a backseat to your wishes, and it was like a breath of fresh air compared to many games today.

I’m probably just gonna play some games i’ve played on the ps2 that also have a pc port,(the suffering and the suffering ties that bind, hitman blood money) play csgo and watch some old classics i have in a over 50gb folder.

As far as i’m aware of Philip, you only know little about mapping and that little is for the goldsource engine. I’m not saying that you shoudn’t make a mod, but it will be very challenging for you because you haven’t done any mapping to the source engine. I might be mistaken, but feel free to correct me.

I wouldn’t be making the maps. One possible idea, probably for 2019, would be to plan a whole mod and make each map a challenge, with the winner being the map used. AT the end of the year, the whole mod would be released. Of course, we would need to carefully plan transitions between each level, teleports, tunnels etc so that it feels natural. There are other things to consider too, but it’s just a plan at the moment.

Ahh ’tis the season to be jolly fa-la-la-la-la la-la-la-la. Now December’s arrived it’s officially time to start getting excited for Christmas, curse the fact I once again haven’t done my shopping early and promise myself that I really will try and get back in shape after the xmas excesses.

I’m still periodically trying to map for Black Mesa but my enthusiasm wanes very quickly now.

I’m also looking vainly for a small house or flat to buy but, barring a spectacular crash in the property market bringing prices down to sensible levels, it’s never going to happen. Currently property prices are just disgustingly obscene. Perhaps I’ll cheer myself with a new game or two instead. I quite like the look of Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

When I open Hammer, several textures – the most prominent being tools_nodraw – are completely invisible. If I draw a brush using nodraw and then deselect it, I won’t find it again the 3D view. I’ve verified the game files (no missing or corrupted files) and even uninstalled and reinstalled Black Mesa two times, yet the issue remains.

This way, I’m unable to map for Black Mesa, which sucks big time, so I hope somebody knows a solution to this.

I haven’t done any Black Mesa mapping, but taking a look at their build of Hammer I see the same effect. I can’t find any buttons, menu options, settings, or even registry keys that change this, but as a workaround, switching the 3D view to 3D Textured, instead of 3D Shaded Textured Polygons, seems to do the trick. The nodraw button even works as expected; it’s all the way at the right end of the toolbar, and is supposed to show or hide nodraw faces. It has no effect in BM Hammer’s shaded view, leaving nodraw invisible regardless, but does work in the other 3D views, as well as in all 3D views in HL2/episodic Hammer.

I’m not sure if this is intentional, or a bug, or maybe a compromise necessary because of some particular thing the BM team does in their flavor of Source or Hammer? If they’re responsive to mapper feedback it might be worth bringing up with them, just in case.

Huh, I’d tried replicating the problem in my BM hammer, including switching between 3D Textured and 3D Shaded. Whilst that didn’t affect nodraws it did mess up a few other textures. Anyway I was wondering what 3D Shaded is supposed to show? I’ve always stuck using the 3D Textured window myself.

Thanks, crowbar, I hadn’t known it was busted elsewhere too; I think I’ve toyed with CS:GO Hammer in the past, but I’d forgotten that problem, if I’d even noticed to begin with.

As far as 3D Shaded, Dave, I think it’s just meant to help you distinguish the shape of geometry better. Plain 3D Textured is basically fullbright, everything’s flat, nothing really pops visually. It can be easier to get a sense of depth with a bit of basic shading. I used to use it all the time when I was more active in HL2 mapping, but lately I’ve been doing Quake stuff with J.A.C.K. (basically Hammer for Quake/Q2/Q3/Goldsrc), and I just now realized my viewport’s been set to 3D Textured the whole time. I guess the lack of shading hasn’t been an issue for me the way I’d thought it would be. Funny the things you don’t notice when you’re absorbed in a project.

So apparently Windows decided that Hammer doesn’t have the “necessary permissions” to save anything to anywhere that isn’t the Desktop. My account is an administrator and I can save correctly with most other programs… but not this one. Whelp, time to clutter my desktop even more!

I have none of the typical problems that people complain about with Windows 10, but apparently there’s no such thing as problem-less Windows, so I get this instead. Thanks Microsoft.

If anyone has any ideas as to how this could be fixed, I’d very much appreciate to hear.